Month: November 2021

Tentacle Tuesday: Can of Worms

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Today we play a game: yes, those long slithery things are wrapped around somebody’s ankle… but are they tentacles, or worms?

In real life, worms (even predatory) don’t really wind around their prey or suffocate them. A biologist could tell us whether they ever ‘hunt’ in huge numbers, but I think we can be fairly certain that the scenes depicted below have never happened in real life. If disbelief must be suspended, I’d rather string it up for a cephalopod invasion, rather than a worm onslaught (ick)… But the characters of this post have had to deal with both kinds of threat. Let’s get on to it!

Worm or tentacle? Well, these have eyes at the end of… of whatever it is… and they seem like individuals, so probably worm. Hey, those who have read this issue before, no spoilers, please!

The Saga of Swamp Thing no. 6 (October 1982, DC). Cover by Tom Yeates.

Let take a look inside this issue…

Page from Sins on the Water, scripted by Martin Pasko, pencilled by Tom Yeates and inked Tom Yeates.

What do you think? These seem to originate from the same source. Let’s peek at the next issue – cephalopod confirmed!

Page from I Have Seen the Splintered Timbers of a Hundred Shattered Hulls, scripted by Martin Pasko and pencilled by Tom Yeates. This story was published in The Saga of Swamp Thing no. 7 (November 1982, DC).

Moving on to our next puzzle! Those are surely tentacles, belonging to some cephalopod monstrosity with a thousand arms:

Hex no. 4 (December 1985, DC). Cover pencilled by Mark Texeira and inked by Klaus Janson.

And yet… the cover story is Worms, scripted by Michael Fleisher, pencilled by Ron Wagner and inked by Carlos Garzón. I stand corrected!

Worms. Grabby, slithering worms. Ugh, please.

Moving on! With a texture distinctly reminiscent of some sort of slug, the following whatchamacallits could be either… but the planet that hungers is using its tentacles, and not worms, to feed. Ping! Correct. This makes the following scene no less disquieting – oh, somebody bring me back to the normal, sea-faring octopus…

This is Battlestar Galactica no. 10 (December 1979, Marvel). Cover pencilled by Pat Broderick and inked by Terry Austin.

Let’s have one last go. This cover so clearly depicts Abby getting grabbed by some underwater tentacled monster, that it regularly appears in tentacle-related searches…

Swamp Thing no. 11 (July-August 1974, DC). Cover by Luis Dominguez (speaking of whom, co-admin RG has a treat for you later this week!)

And yet! The cover is the self-explanatory The Conqueror Worms!, scripted by Len Wein and illustrated by Nestor Redondo. The star creatures of this story are actually pretty adorable, especially their mini-trunks and moist, sensitive eyes:

When somebody killed one of those things, I was seriously peeved.

I hope some of these examples gave you pause, even if for just a little bit!

~ ds

Treasured Stories: “Any Port in a Storm” (1974)

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« I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve. » — George Bernard Shaw

Today, let’s spread a little romance around. This much-maligned genre certainly deserves more affection and respect. From what I’ve observed, even social media groups nominally dedicated to romance comics mostly exist to mock and denigrate them. Honestly, are they truly sillier and more formulaic than superhero comics?

Anyway, while recently visiting a local comic shop with the intent of buying some supplies, I also discovered a fine trove of late 60s to mid-70s romance titles, affordably-priced to boot. Having spent a month or so leisurely reading through the pile, here’s a favourite tale. My co-conspirator and romantic partner ds spotted this one first, and I agreed with her assessment that this was something special. Let us, then, cast off into the briny blue… just don’t forget to bring the oars.

Jack Abel (1927-1996) was one of those efficient and reliably solid artists of the sort that held the comics industry together through the years. I honestly can’t think of any other artist who, more than once, worked concurrently for DC (mostly inking, but occasionally pencilling) Marvel (inking and editorial), Charlton (pencils and inks) and Gold Key (pencils and inks). Add to that tally Atlas-Seaboard (in its sole year of existence, 1975) and Skywald, and you have a mighty ubiquitous fellow. It is worth specifying that, unlike most of comics’ other utility players and pinch hitters, his work never seemed rushed or botched.

For what it’s worth, Abel was twice the hapless victim of fine artiste Roy Lichtenstein, both in 1963, with: Torpedo…Los! and Crak!

I enjoy Abel’s Charlton work most, because he was often assigned some memorable scripts (an unlikely prospect at Gold Key), chief among them The Lure of the Swamp! (script by Nicola Cuti, Haunted no. 8, Oct. 1972); Mr. Blanque (script by Cuti, Ghostly Haunts no. 28, Nov. 1972); Like Father, Like Son (script by Cuti, Haunted no. 10, Jan. 1972); Sewer Patrol! (script by Cuti, Ghostly Haunts no. 31, Apr. 1973); and The Teddy Bear! (script by Cuti, Haunted no. 15, Nov. 1973)…

Any Port in a Storm, however, is clearly the work of Joe Gill, who frequently helped distinguish and elevate Charlton’s romance material by deftly integrating just the right amount of plausible detail of business, engineering, sports or what-have-you matters into his narratives. Presumably, Gill was getting further mileage from all the research he’d conducted in order to write the fifteen-issue Popeye Career Awareness Library, a couple of years earlier.

As you can witness, this is every bit as much of a tale of adventure as it is a romance, and indeed, why split hairs when you can have both?

Any Port in a Storm was rightly picked as the cover feature: this is Love Diary no. 90 (Nov. 1974, Charlton); George Wildman, managing editor.

-RG

Tentacle Tuesday: Squeaks and Quacks From the House of Mouse

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Eventually I accumulate enough material that posts bleed into other posts, sort of like a melting blueberry puddle gradually makes it way into the nooks and crannies of every object in its path on the counter (that happened recently, thus the very specific analogy). In this case, the blueberry juice is Uncle Scrooge et al., who have already appeared in Tentacle Tuesday: Duck Feathers!. Today our emphasis is more on Mickey Mouse, but I can’t promise other Disney characters won’t wander in for a cup of tea (or a quick tussle with an octopus).

As a matter of fact, my usual habit of arranging images in chronological order starts this post on a distinctly un-Mickey-like note…

The following sequence is from Ghost of the Grotto (written and illustrated by Carl Barks), published in Four Color no. 159 – Donald Duck in The Ghost of the Grotto (August 1947, Dell). You can read the full issue here.

Okay, I promised Mickey Mouse, so I’d better get back on topic!

Page from The Phantom Ship, scripted by Carl Fallberg and illustrated by Paul Murry; it was published in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories vol. 25 no. 3 (December 1964, Gold Key).

Speaking of the aforementioned Paul Murry – I bet you have never seen an octopus adorned with quite so many bracelets.

Mickey Mouse no. 159 (October 1975, Gold Key). The cover is by Paul Murry.

Now we step into the dubious territory of European Disney comics – don’t forget to read about co-admin RG’s enjoyably scathing views on the subject here.

Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge Adventures no. 12 (April 1989, Gladstone). Does anybody recognize the cover artist?

The following story, credited as ‘story and art: the Egmont Group, script: John Cochran, colour: Scott Rockwell’, was published in Walt Disney’s Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse no. 4 (March 1996, Gladstone). You can read the full issue here.

I’ll wrap up by going back to the top, which is to say finishing on as high a note as this post started on. Carl Barks, ladies and gentlemen!

Makings of a Fish Story (1988)

Wishing you happy undersea adventures… until next Tuesday rolls around!

~ ds

Your Usual Corner Table at Mule’s Diner

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« There’s a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milkshake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner. » — David Lynch

My relationship with the National Lampoon has always held a strong element of contention: in my view, for every brilliant strip or feature, there’s some deplorably juvenile shock-for-shock’s-sake fratboy dross. But the good stuff, even if it doesn’t always outweigh the bad, is still worth tracking down… and sharing!

While Stan Mack is most celebrated for his impressive comics reportage (an area explored in this previous post), I’m just as taken with his earlier endeavour, the surreal Mule’s Diner, sporadically published in the Lampoon during the magazine’s heyday (the first half of the 1970s).

In his history of the magazine, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (2010, Abrams — now also a film!), Mack’s cartooning colleague, Rick Meyerowitz, wrote of him admiringly:

« In Mule’s Diner, surrealism was dished up with the coffee, or maybe it was the coffee. Stan invited the Lampoon’s readers to sit and have a cup and listen to a story. Dine at Mule’s and you’ll find yourself ruminating on some fantastic little morsel for days afterward. The stories, like the ink, are indelible. Read a few now and see if there is another artist who has cross-hatched his way this deep inside parts of your head you didn’t even know you had.

Stan misses nothing. It’s only after looking at the picture he drew of you that you notice you’ve been missing a button on your coat. I saw him interview a politician in a crowded convention hall. He looked the man right in the eye while he wrote down verbatim what the guy said, and drew his portrait without even once looking at the 2×3 inch pad he held in his right hand. The portrait looked like the guy, too. That’s talent! »

Originally published in National Lampoon vol. 1 no. 24 (March 1972).
Originally published in National Lampoon vol. 1 no. 27 (June 1972).
Originally published in National Lampoon vol. 1 no. 34 (Jan. 1973).
Originally published in National Lampoon vol. 1 no. 39 (June 1973).
Originally published in National Lampoon vol. 1 no. 46 (Jan. 1974).
Originally published in National Lampoon vol. 1 no. 53 (Aug. 1974).
And the most famous of the lot — the tragic saga of Murray’s fart, from National Lampoon vol. 1 no. 68 (Nov. 1975);
The handsome auteur, sans moustache, displays his best side. Photo by Sylvia Plachy.

-RG

Tentacle Tuesday: Tentacles in Hiding

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Greetings to all my dear tentacle zealots! This week I am rather exhausted from a move (not mine own, which somehow makes it worse?), and so I will retreat into my cozy shell, just like this handsome fellow:

But I don’t want this to be a complete disappointment, so I will leave you with these two panoramas:

Supper at Sea by Ben Boling, a freelance illustrator who posted this beauty on his deviant art profile.
Characters from left to right: Alice the Goon (topless!), the Sea Hag, Poopdeck Pappy, Brutus, Professor O.G. Wattasnozzle, Olive Oyl, Popeye, the Jeep, J. Wellington Wimpy, Rough House the cook, Swee’ Pea, George Geezil, Castor Oyl.

To quote the man in question: «  This, my dearies, is my takeoff on Leonardo’s Last Supper. All of the characters are from the Thimble Theater strip by E.C. Segar, which later became just the Popeye comic strip. I tried to keep most of the characters in the same positions as the apostles are in Leonardo’s version, and tried to put in a few little fun things relating to the original. For instance, putting Olive in the same place as the apostle John, who some believe to be Mary Magdelene. I also had to put Brutus in the place of Judas Iscariot, and have him holding money (pieces of silver). Some theories also say that both Judas and Christ were reaching for the Eucharist in Leo’s version, so I included that too, replacing the bread with limes so they don’t get scurvy. And the cigar in the ashtray is a tribute to Popeye’s creator E.C. Segar who used to sign his drawings with a little cigar with the smoke forming the letter “S” in his name. The halo effect in the wood around Popeye was pretty much an accident, perhaps there was divine intervention? »

Of course you can also revisit the past in the shape of Tentacle Tuesday: Popeye, the Sailor Man.

And, in a slightly different vein —

« In 1952, Charles Addams, at the height of his skills as a cartoonist, painted a lush, monochromatic mural on canvas for a bar at the Dune Deck, a hotel in the Hamptons. (The work is nearly fourteen feet long and more than four feet high.) When the hotel changed hands, the new owners—one of them a Penn State alumnus—donated the painting to the university’s Palmer Museum of Art. A few years later, it was transferred to the library, where it hung in the Lending Services area, until it was relegated to its current location, in 2000. Somewhere along the way, it picked up the name ‘An Addams Family Holiday.’ »

As seen from the quote, this ‘mysterious’ mural by (naturally) Charles Addams has a quite interesting, recent-ish discovery story. Read about it the excellent article in the New Yorker (excerpted above) here, or if you don’t have access, try the slightly less well-written, but nevertheless informative version here (sorry, Pennsylvania News).

The proud artiste:

~ ds

Some of Life’s Darkest Moments

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« This kind of accuracy, continued long enough, can ruin a man who is constructed as I am. I want to be pretty. I want to eliminate facts and fill up the gap with charm. » — Samuel Clemens, writing to a friend of a pen sketch sent to him by young admirer H.T. Webster

I had originally set out to write (and I may yet) of pioneering newspaper cartoonist (and honorary Southpaw*) Harold Tucker “Webby” Webster‘s most famous feature, The Timid Soul (starring Caspar Milquetoast, his contribution to the English language), but I noticed that Atlas Obscura had beaten me to the punch, and quite honourably at that.

Thankfully, it’s fair to say that Webster (1885-1952) had plenty more arrows in his quiver. According to a 1945 Time Magazine profile of the artist (who was even featured on the cover!):

« H. T. Webster has learned to slice and serve his generous chunks of U.S. life methodically. Caspar (The Timid Soul) appears Sundays and Mondays. The pitilessly fanatic and bad-mannered bridge players run Fridays. Boyhood’s lovingly elaborated triumphs (The Thrill That Comes Once in a Lifetime) and defeats (Life’s Darkest Moment) appear on Saturdays and Tuesdays. Thursdays bring How to Torture Your Husband (or Wife). On Wednesdays, in The Unseen Audience**, he pokes a sharp-pointed stick at radio—which of all mixed blessings most needs satirizing, and gets it least. Webster, in fact, is possibly radio’s most effective critic. »

Honestly, they’d each be rewarding choices, but I’ve opted, on this occasion, to draw from the cool, sombre well of Life’s Darkest Moment.

A glimpse at the infancy of spam.
Up here in Canada, we recently had a bit of a furore over a sanctimonious (yet deceitful) fusspot spearheading the destruction of a bunch of graphic novels. Oh, and speaking of Robert Louis Stevenson, tomorrow’s his birthday, number one hundred and seventy one!
Then as now, one can generally rely on the news to be dire.
Another entry in our collection of Legendary Cartoonists With a Great Tousled Head o’ Hair.
And just so you don’t conclude that Webster’s work was all about, and just about ‘poking gentle fun at life’s little foibles‘, here’s what has to be the darkest, most brutally scathing political cartoon*** I’ve ever seen come out of the mainstream US press (circa 1946!). Incidentally, Webster was a Republican. The original art of this masterpiece resides in the permanent collection of The Library of Congress, right where it belongs.

-RG

*“For many years no one but his close friends knew of an acute arthritis which in 1927 cost him the use of his right hand. In three months he trained himself not only to write, but to draw, left-handed.” — Philo Calhoun in Biographical Sketch, The Best of H.T. Webster (1953, Simon and Schuster).

**In 1948, The Unseen Audience won him a Peabody Award for distinguished service to radio!

***He “… returned to Chicago, where he spent three years drawing front-page political cartoons for the Chicago Inter-Ocean, prompting one politician to introduce a bill in the state legislature forbidding unflattering cartoons.” (it didn’t pass.)

Tentacle Tuesday: « Do me up like one of your French girls! »

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Tentacular greetings to all! Today’s post finds us with our feet firmly planted in France (well, maybe with one toe dipping into Belgium, as usual). As friend Barney might say, come for the Important & Serious Artist discussion, stay for the ‘naked man/nubile woman’ fringe benefits…

Many are fans of Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, far better known under his nom de plume, Mœbius. Co-admin RG and my humble self do not belong to this category, which is possibly why he has never been mentioned in WOT before. RG thinks he’s ‘the Serge Gainsbourg of French comics‘ (not a compliment); I do not specifically dislike his work… nor am I interested enough in it to investigate. We could argue about Mœbius’ profound influence on science-fiction and cyperpunk and his lasting impact on comics until we’re blue in the face, so I suggest we look at some tentacles instead!

The original art from Il y a un Prince-Charmant sur Phenixon (Pilote, 1973), published in English in Heavy Metal Magazine v. 4 no. 10 (January 1981) as ‘There Is a Prince Charming on Phenixon’.

The Long Tomorrow was written by American screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and illustrated by Mœbius in 1975. Published in Métal hurlant (nos. 7 and 8) in 1976, it was then picked by Heavy Metal in 1977 for the anglophone market. This story is credited with having heavily influenced a number of movies – Blade Runner gets mentioned a lot, for example. Read the full story (and a little interview with O’Bannon) here.

Page from the story published in Heavy Metal no. 5 (August 1977).

Speaking of Métal hurlant, this cover offers some quality tentacles from French comics artist/illustrator Jean Solé:

Métal Hurlant no. 3 (July 1975), cover by Jean Solé.

Solé liked the absurd, the grotesque, and the psychedelic, so naturally he has more tentacles on offer than just one cover!

Illustration painted for publication in Pilote in 1985.

The last offering of today’s TT is this very dramatic action scene by Claude Serre. Is the surgeon trying to stuff these tentacles back in, or extract them? We shall never know.

Scanned from Serre, a best-of collection published by Glénat in 2001. This illustration was an excerpt from Serre’s Humour noir et hommes en blanc (“Black Humour and Men in White”), a collection of sombrely jocular drawings on the topic of medicine.

~ ds

Treasured Stories: “The People vs. Hendricks!” (1964)

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« Programmed for love, she can be quite tender
Treat her unkind, nothing offends her
She vacuums the carpet and doesn’t complain
She’ll walk the dog in the pouring rain. » — Was (Not Was), Robot Girl

Today, on the occasion of his birthday (this would be number 112), we celebrate the great writer and editor Leo Rosenbaum (1909-1974), Potentate of Pseudonyms. If you know of him at all, odds are it’s under his nom de plume of Richard E. Hughes, pioneering chief writer and editor of the American Comics Group (ACG, 1943-67), and then perhaps under one of the numerous colourful aliases he adopted to conceal the fact that he was doing most, if not all, the company’s writing. In alphabetical order, meet Pierre Alonzo, Ace Aquila, Brad Everson, Lafcadio Lee (a salute to the Irish-born writer of Japanese ghost stories of Kwaidan fame, perhaps?), Kermit Lundgren, Shane O’Shea, Greg Olivetti (probably inspired by the brand of his typewriter!), Kurato Osaki, Pierce Rand, Bob Standish and Zev Zimmer.

Early in my comics collecting days, I spent a lot of time consulting Robert Overstreet‘s The Comic Book Price Guide (a practice I’ve utterly abandoned) gleaning random bits of trivia and dreaming about potential acquisitions. One item that greatly piqued my interest was this note:

From the 12th edition of The Comic Book Price Guide (1982, Overstreet Publications).

Well, I did eventually get my hands on a copy, and I must say wasn’t disappointed. And since I was taught to share with the other kids, here’s the story in question.

While “The People…” draws upon familiar elements of The Bride of Frankenstein and say, Inherit the Wind, I daresay that its heart-rending conclusion is its very own.
And here’s the cover. This is Unknown Worlds no. 36 (Dec. 1964 – Jan. 1965, ACG); art by Kurt Schaffenberger.

As for the artist: Johnny Craig (1926-2001) had been absent from the comics field most of the decade that followed EC Comics’ near-total collapse and the advent of the Comics Code, when he suddenly turned up at ACG (he’d been toiling in advertising). He would later do some work with Warren, Marvel and DC until the early 80s, at which point he more or less retired. Craig’s always been near the very top of my favourites at EC. Since he was, artistically-speaking, painstaking (‘slow as mollasses in February‘, my art school drawing teacher was fond of saying) and quite self-critical, Gaines entrusted him, as he did in the case of Harvey Kurtzman, with some editorial and scripting responsibilities to make up the income shortfall and keep him around and happy. And so the Craig-edited-and-led Vault of Horror is easily the finest of the company’s horror trio, largely thanks to Craig’s solid writing skills, not to mention his inspired artwork. Craig’s stories provided a much-needed breather from Gaines and Feldstein’s often powerful, but also formulaic and overwritten tales.

Interestingly, while Craig’s art style is overall understated and full of spit and polish, he created several of the company’s most transgressive images (such as this one and that one). Editor-writer Hughes knew precisely what he was doing (as any editor worth his salt should) when he conceived this story and assigned it to Craig. It plays superbly to the man’s strengths, if you ask me.

-RG

Tentacle Tuesday: The Time Has Come for Namor, Fish-Man

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« Then suddenly, like some gigantic serpent out of the deep, a huge, quivering tentacle tose from out of the sea — a sight from any seaman’s maddest, most impossible nightmare –! »

Today we pay another visit to Subbie (or Subby), which every bit as horrible an abbreviation as ‘hubby’ for ‘husband’. We’ve gone over his history in a previous post (see Tentacle Tuesday: Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner), so now we can concentrate on Action! Adventure!! Excitement!!! What’s on his charged schedule, you might ask? Why, a quick tussle with some Soviet submarines, a few pompous (I’m sorry, I meant ‘dramatic and exciting’) speeches, a plunge intro ‘wintry, unplumbed depths’, a lengthy trip to memory lane, and an epic fight with an unliving cyborg!

My favourite, naturally, are the Soviet submarines.

Sub-Mariner no. 35 (August 1954, Atlas), cover by Sol Brodsky. The insides of this issue actually don’t have tentacles, but do have pretty much everything else – it’s a fun, wacky read.

Moving forward by a little more than 15 years, we get embroiled in a slightly different kind of evil…

Sub-Mariner no. 27 (July 1970, Marvel), cover pencilled by Sal Buscema and inked by Mike Esposito.

When Wakes the Kraken! was scripted by Roy Thomas, pencilled by Sal Buscema and inked by Mike Esposito. Aside from a lot of dialogue (check out the ‘ay, woman… but the time has come for battle… not words!‘), this story also has a lot of plump, high-quality tentacles.

This cover is fun, given that the Symbiotic Man appears to have tentacles on the soles of his feet and the ends of his hair as well. Did somebody actually demand that Namor should fight alone? I was under the impression that Marvel readers were more into ‘the more the merrier’ type of fun.

Marvel Spotlight no. 27 (April 1976). Cover pencilled by Gil Kane (Tentacle Tuesday dabbler!) and inked by Frank Giacoia.

The cover story is titled Death Is the Symbionic Man!, scripted by Bill Mantlo and illustrated by Jim Mooney. Note the typo in ‘its’ in the second speech bubble.

The octopus appears to be having serious doubts about his presence in this fight. “Aw, do I hafta?”
What’s the point of having a super cool symbiotic-cyborg creature if it needs an octopus do its dirty work? This beaked octopus would do well in Tentacle Tuesday: Notes on Anatomy.

~ ds